Sequestration Will Cost 12,000+ Hampton Roads Jobs

Four aircraft carriers, from back to front, the Abraham Lincoln (72), the Enterprise (65), the George H.W. Bush (77) and the Dwight D. Eisenhower (69), tied up at Norfolk Naval Station on Thursday, February 14, 2013. (Steve Earley | Virginian-Pilot file photo)

Certain parts of Hampton Roads strongly supported the Republican Party in the November, 2012 elections.  Now, thanks to the obstructionism and economic sabotage of the GOP controlled House of Representatives, it is estimated that some 12,000+ jobs will be lost in Hampton Roads.  If these GOP supporters are really true to their party's agenda and mantra, they should step forward and volunteer to be among the first to be laid off and furloughed.  Will they do so?  Of course not!  Like their Christofascist allies in the GOP, they are HYPOCRITES.  They only support budget cuts and lay offs if they harm others.  These people wrap themselves in religion, claim to care about children and then  seek to throw the less fortunate under the bus.  And yes, I am talking about the good people who live in areas like Alanton and Little Neck in Virginia Beach and Newport News' "gold coast."  12,000+ families in Hampton Roads will suffer the consequences of GOP extremism.  Here are highlights from a Virginian Pilot article:

Hampton Roads will lose more than 12,000 jobs this year if sequestration is not halted, Old Dominion University economic researchers said. Sequestration is scheduled to begin taking effect later today.

ODU’s Economic Forecasting Project recently projected that the region would add 5,195 jobs in 2013. With sequestration, Hampton Roads will, instead, lose 12,237 jobs, the economists said today.
The researchers also revised their estimate on the regional economic input, or gross regional product. Instead of going up 1.68 percent this year, they said it will decline 0.67 percent.

Sequestration, the economists said, will cost the region more than $2 billion in spending. Nearly $1.9 billion of that is defense-related, the Economic Forecasting Project said.

Already refit and refueling work on the carrier Abraham Lincoln (in the picture above) has been postponed and a carrier deployment has been postponed.  And that's just the beginning of the impact.  The ripple effect on local business will see a multiplier effect.  In another article, the Virginian Pilot notes that the hospital ship Comfort may end up being confined to its wharf:

The naval hospital ship Comfort arrived at its new home base at Norfolk Naval Station this morning on what is supposed to be a brief stopover on its way to a humanitarian mission in South and Central America.

But sequestration could change that. If the across-the-board budget cuts looming over federal spending kick in today, the Comfort’s operations are slated to be canceled, relegating the ship to inaction at the pier.

The 894-foot-long ship is a moving triage center with 12 operating rooms, dental and optometry suites, capability for a CT scanner and hundreds of hospital beds.

The ship is scheduled to head out in early April to carry out Operation Continuing Promise 2013, a four-month humanitarian mission to eight countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean: Costa Rica, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Peru.

Who cares about humanitarian efforts if one is a Republican or Christofascist!

Budget Deadlock Creates Anger at Crucial Navy Shipyard

Today Barack Obama will visit Newport News Shipbuilding in nearby Newport News, Virginia.  This shipyard is crucial to the Navy since it is the only yard that can build atomic powered carriers.  It is crucial to Virginia because it is the state's largest single employer.  And it is about to get severely slammed by the sequestration that begins at week end.  The irony is that GOP Congressman Scott Rigell - one of the GOP extremists pushing the nation towards sequestration - will accompany Obama (as will Bobby Scott).  Both the boyfriend and I have family members who work at Newport News Shipbuilding and who may financial harm as a result of the sequestration cuts.  The other irony is that back in the lead up to the November 2012 elections, many of the less expensive homes in the area of Newport News near the shipyard had Romney and Rigell signs (the expensive homes had Obama signs).  Would that these cretins who supported Romney and Rigell could be the first workers laid off and furloughed.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing distress and anger at the shipyard.  Here are highlights which underscore that the GOP doesn't give a tinker's damn about everyday Americans:

As President Obama returned from a Florida golfing trip and Congress was on a Presidents’ Day break last week, Tommy Bassett, a nuclear machinist, was applying for a backup job at Lowe’s.

The carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was supposed to arrive at the massive shipyard here on Valentine’s Day for a multibillion-dollar overhaul that would take years and provide Bassett and some of the other 21,000 shipyard employees with steady work. But the budget deadlock in Washington prompted the Navy to delay the project. For how long, no one seems to know. Whether layoffs are coming — no one seems to know that, either.

Bassett is too anxious to wait to find out. His wife is having their first child in April, and she had to stop working for medical reasons. “If the budget doesn’t come in, they don’t have money for us,” Bassett said. “I haven’t told her yet . . . I didn’t want her to worry.”

Residents are bitter and resentful. It’s difficult to have a conversation without getting an earful of expletives. And there is little patience here for serving as political props in Washington’s latest budget drama.

Newport News sits at the heart of Hampton Roads, a region whose economy and identity are based largely on the tens of thousands of military personnel, contractors and veterans who live and work here. SEAL Team 6 is based in the region. Jets from Naval Air Station Oceana regularly buzz along the Virginia Beach coast.

Newport News is where the Navy makes aircraft carriers and submarines, and this city of 180,000 feels like a company town, where generations of families have found good-paying jobs making something lasting.  Many fear that prideful past and the community it helped build will fall victim to Washington-style pettiness and irresponsibility.

Executives from defense behemoth Huntington Ingalls Industries, which runs Newport News Shipbuilding, say they are disappointed by the delays in the massive, carefully staged Lincoln overhaul project, which will end up costing taxpayers even more later. Other contractors in Hampton Roads have already warned of major potential layoffs.

“The way you keep costs down is to have predictability and continuity — the exact opposite of what we have right now,” said Newport News City Manager Neil Morgan, who keeps close tabs on operations at the shipyard, the city’s “powerhouse employer.”

Johnson wants Obama to come to Hampton Roads and take it straight to his colleagues at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.  “I put it on Congress, I don’t put it on him,” Johnson said. “They’re messing with the military, and I don’t appreciate it. They’re messing with me. He needs to let people know that when he gets down here.”

Yes, many need to get the message that they were played as fools by Republicans in the last election and the now so prevalent racism and religious extremism of the GOP was used  to convince people to foolishly vote against their own best interests.  Many may well be about to pay the price for their foolishness and bigotries and prejudices.

 

The Immense Economic Cost of the GOP's Intransigence

While I could not stomach watching Eric Cantor on Meet the Press - I feared losing my breakfast if I had to listen to his disingenuous lies - the show did start out with references to the looming economic catastrophe about to hit the Hampton Roads region thanks to the GOP controlled House of Representative's intransigence and willingness to allow sequestration budget cuts to begin in less than a month.   Tens of thousands will lose their jobs in this region alone.  What is perhaps even more disturbing is that the GOP no longer cares about average Americans.  In its quest to destroy the economy so as to harm Barack Obama - a quest driven frankly by racism in the GOP base - millions of Americans will suffer economic harm at the hands of the GOP.  And your rank and file GOP congressman (and congresswoman)?  They simply do not care.  Today's Virginian Pilot lets loss with a blast about what the economic costs may be in the region, but sadly fails to sufficiently lay the blame at the feet of the GOP.  Here are editorial highlights:

The Department of Defense euphemistically calls 2013 "a year of budgetary uncertainty."  That bureaucratese sugarcoats the number-crunching at the Pentagon, which is slashing training, maintenance, technology and temporary employees - and last week delayed deployment of the Truman carrier strike group -as it waits to see whether Congress can find a deal to reduce the deficit.
It doesn't begin to capture the panic in families across the region, staring into their own budgets for 2013 and seeing much worse than uncertainty. Or the worries of their friends and neighbors, their employers and the merchants who depend on their business.

It understates the apprehension of city leaders bracing for municipal layoffs, hiring freezes, furloughs and canceled construction projects.

Absent remarkable progress on budget negotiations in Washington, D.C., in the next two weeks, the Pentagon will cancel maintenance on its ships and planes, lay off tens of thousands of workers from shipyards and bases, furlough 800,000 civilian employees, delay the four-year overhaul of the carrier Lincoln and defer construction of another carrier.

In a region defined and supported by the military, the job losses - Old Dominion University economists predict between 28,700 and 42,300 jobs directly and indirectly lost in Hampton Roads - will translate to a regional recession or worse: a glut of houses on the market, falling property values, high unemployment and people moving away.

Military spending has kept this region's economy humming as long as people have called it home. The portion of the local economy dependent on defense now hovers near 47 percent, a fact that allowed this region to endure the recession better than much of the nation.

With the Truman's deployment to the Persian Gulf delayed, the Navy reduces its military presence in that region to one carrier group. Navy brass say the Eisenhower will be deployed there later this month, as scheduled, possibly to be replaced in the summer by the west coast-based Nimitz. The George H.W. Bush deployment is delayed; deployments of fast-attack submarines would be canceled. Flying hours would be cut in half. Operations in the Caribbean and around South America would be eliminated.

Hampton Roads would lose $271 million in ship repair business. Sailors would lose tuition assistance. All training operations except for sailors about to be deployed would cease. Every civilian would be furloughed for up to 22 days without pay. Air shows featuring the Blue Angels would be canceled.

The drastic reductions, Rear Adm. John Kirby told Federal News Radio, make it "harder in 2014 to preserve readiness." The ships that were supposed to be repaired and refurbished won't be able to deploy on schedule. Cancellation of training means sailors aren't as prepared as they should be. The cuts in technology mean military equipment will grow outdated.

On a parallel track, localities are looking at cuts to their construction budgets. They, too, are considering furloughs.  And, once again, leaders are wondering how to diversify the region's economy to limit the impact of sequestration.

That means improving the transportation system, he [Virginia Beach mayor Will Sessoms] said. It means luring alternative energy development and technology research to complement NASA's and ODU's modeling and simulation work. It means expanding medical centers to include research and rehabilitation facilities. It means making the city and the region inviting for entrepreneurs.

The ripple of lost military spending, especially on the scale of the sequester, means foreclosures, empty storefronts, empty houses. It's hard to think about growing and thriving when the immediate future is nothing but uncertain.  That is Congress' fault.

I'm sorry, but it is the GOP controlled House of Representatives' fault.  Let's place blame where it belongs.  As for helping the region to diversify, one of the first steps is to revolt against the Virginia GOP's 19th century social agenda which tells countless individuals and businesses that bigotry and discrimination are still the name of the game in Virginia and that progressive entrepreneurs need to look elsewhere to thrive and build their businesses.  That gay employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia can still be fired for their sexual orientation and that the Virginia GOP is actively disenfranchising minority voters send this message loud and clear to anyone observant.

Layoffs at Focus on the Family

Perhaps there is a God after all. The Colorado Independent is reporting that due to declining revenues - even after vigorously using the bogeyman of the "gay menace" to scare donors - Daddy Dobson's hate factory, Focus on the Family, is poised to announce major layoffs just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals. Obviously, I have little sympathy for Focus on the Family and those who chose to work for - in my opinion - such a vile organization. Hopefully, more and more people will come to recognize that Daddy D and those like him are in nowise Christian and that all they do is pervert the true Christian message and FOF's revenue declines intensify. Here are some story highlights:

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Focus on the Family is poised to announce major layoffs to its Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire today. The cutbacks come just weeks after the group pumped more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay-marriage ban in California. Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals, as a sad commentary on the true priorities of ministry.

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In all, Focus pumped $539,000 in cash and another $83,000 worth of non-monetary support into the measure to overturn a California Supreme Court ruling that allowed gays and lesbians to marry in that state. The group was the seventh-largest donor to the effort in the country. The cash contributions are equal to the salaries of 19 Coloradans earning the 2008 per capita income of $29,133.

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Two months ago, citing Wal-Mart and online retailers as having cut into its product market, Focus announced that 46 employees would be laid off from its distribution department. Late Friday, Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger confirmed that more layoffs are in store, but said the ministry will not release details until Monday afternoon. Schneeberger hinted that some programs may be eliminated entirely, but declined to elaborate. . . . . This is the third year that Focus has laid off employees due to budget cuts.
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But Lewis, the Colorado Springs activist, wonders whether the families who donate to the nonprofit ministry, realize where their funds really end up. “Seriously, I would imagine their supporters have got to be asking the question about whether their church is really practicing their theology.” For Lewis, who is straight, the issue boils down to the significance of targeting a class of citizens for exclusion, at the expense of the families that the ministry could be helping — in this case their own employees.